Abstract
Would Ho Chi Minh have been a good newscaster? Would things have been different if he had gone to San Francisco in the summer of 1944 to broadcast the news in Vietnamese? As David Marr says, one cannot help but wonder;1 and one cannot help but wonder also what other events might have turned out differently; and whether, in or out of the event, the course of modern Vietnamese history could have been changed. Whether, in conception, the Vietnam War was a tragedy because it had to happen as it did. Or whether it was a tragedy because it might have been averted.
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Notes and References
Stein Tønnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh and de Gaulle in a World at War (Oslo-London, 1991) p. 405, fn. 193.
Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York, 1995); reviewed in Asian Affairs February 1996.
A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire Malaya Part II: The Communist Insurrection 1948–1953 (London, 1995).
S. Tønnesson, 1946: Déclenchement de la guerre d’Indochine (Paris, 1987 ).
A. Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (London, 1975) p. 60.
William J Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (2nd edn) ( Boulder, Colorado 1996 ).
Ronald H. Spector, United States Army in Vietnam. Advice and Support: The Early Years 1941–1960 (Washington, DC, 1983).
Jacques Dalloz, The War in Indo-China 1945–54 (Dublin, 1990), p. 169.
Francois Joyaux, La Chine et le Réglement du Premier Conflit d’Indochine (Paris 1979) p. 297
William Conrad Gibbons, The US Government and the Vietnam War Part: I 1945–1961 (Washington, DC 1984) p. 261.
Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (Cambridge 1996), p. 55.
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© 1998 Nguyen Vu Tung
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Short, A. (1998). Origins and Alternatives: Comments, Counter-Facts and Commitments. In: Lowe, P. (eds) The Vietnam War. Problems in Focus: Manchester. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26949-5_2
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